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Historical documents

The four-page pamphlet transcribed below and entitled 'An Appeal', was composed jointly by Emma and Charles Darwin (see letter from Emma Darwin to W. D. Fox, [29 September 1863]). The pamphlet, which protested against the cruelty of steel vermin-traps, was privately printed in July, and Emma organised the distribution of the pamphlet in August and September 1863 (see letter from G. B. Sowerby Jr to Emma Darwin, 22 July 1863 and n. 1, and letters from Emma Darwin to W. D. Fox, [6–27 September 1863], 29 September [1863], and 8 December [1863]).

4661. (Chairman.) We are very sensible of your kindness in coming at some sacrifice to yourself to express your opinions to the Commission. We attribute it to the great interest which we know you take in the subject referred to us, both on the score of science and also on the score of humanity?

I No experiment which can be performed under the influence of an anasthetic ought to be done without it.

II No painful experiment is justifiable for the mere purpose of illustrating a law or fact already demonstrated; in other words, experimentation without the employment of anasthetics is not a fitting exhibition for teaching purposes.

—by Asa Gray

EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY

—by Asa Gray

WHAT IS DARWINISM?

The Nation, May 28, 1874

The question which Dr. Hodge asks he promptly and decisively answers: ‘What is Darwinism? it is atheism.’

Leaving aside all subsidiary and incidental matters, let us consider–1. What the Darwinian doctrine is, and 2. How it is proved to be atheistic. Dr. Hodge’s own statement of it cannot be very much bettered:

(American Journal of Science and Arts, September, 1860)

—by Asa Gray

Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta wrote the following journal entries in March and July 1871 in a small lockable, leather-bound notebook now in the Darwin Archive of Cambridge University Library (DAR 247). They are published in volume 19 of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (CUP 2012) and reproduced here with the permission of the Darwin family and of Cambridge University Press. Her diary has been transcribed in its entirety; two pages have been excised from the notebook immediately following the last entry and one page has been excised within it, presumably by Henrietta herself.

On 20 May 1865, Emma Darwin recorded in her diary that John Chapman, a prominent London publisher who had studied medicine in London and Paris in the early 1840s, visited Down to consult with Darwin about his ill health. In 1863 Chapman started to treat epilepsy with ice and developed a theory of ‘neuro-dynamic medicine’ according to which many diseases were treatable through applications of heat or cold to the spine over long periods.

Thanks for sending paper on geological development (Dana 1856). Discusses infertility of species. Discusses first part of Asa Gray’s paper (A. Gray 1856–7). Thanks for note on the Cave Rat. Discusses a new species of fossil cirripede, in the genusChthamalus. Explains his interest in pigeon breeding.